This post is part of an ongoing interview with author Mark John Isola about his forthcoming book Inky Flesh, so check back for more questions. Once posted, a link following the current Q&A will allow you to click through to read the next question–or begin reading from the first question: Why the title Inky Flesh? Quotes that are reasonably sized and maintain the context of the discussion are permitted for review, interview, academic, and blogging purposes—a link to the web page quoted will help maintain context.

Here is the current question:

Cal: Let’s return to a point you made earlier. You said: “If you don’t feel it, you don’t write it.” This does not sound schlocky, as you said earlier, but this is the kind of thing one hears from writers and artists generally. What does it mean to “feel” a story?

MJ: This is somewhat hard to explain, but I think this is a fairly common experience for artists of all kinds. Describing this feeling often sounds airy fairy or like ego masturbation, so ugh. But, the fact is there is a certain feeling I either get or not for a story. Stories come to me constantly, but my feeling toward them is not constant. This other feeling is something like desire or attraction. It is a certain knowingness. If I feel it, I write, and I never write without it. I do not even think I could, for there would be no flow. When I have tried to do this, just to get a story written, what I produce is not very good and gets deleted. I have learned over time to only write with this feeling—to write with the flow, if you will. This is not at all a prolific stance, not by a long shot. But, what it produces is way more worth writing and reading.

Here’s one way to express how writing works for me: it’s like that moment during a first date when you know you want a second one—or you feel open for a kiss—or not. It’s that simple. You feel it, or you don’t, but either way, an important decision is made. The second dates refused are the stories I do not pursue. This decides whether or not I write a story.

Cal: You do not write these other stories, but you still have the idea for them–and just let them go?

MJ: Yes, and that would be the first date, but alas, not every first date leads to a second and not every idea leads to a story that should be written. In our era of producing two novels or such a year, I know this sounds very strange–almost counterintuitive, but self-editing is an important part of a writer and artist’s development of their craft.

Cal: So, is it fair to say your relationship to sex writing might be understood in terms of sex?

MJ: Whatever the exact metaphor, I imagine this is how it works for many writers. Writing is a very intimate thing and so is reading. However, writing fiction can also be a rather unromantic romance, if you put it in terms of love and sex, for it is much more akin to the work of a long-term relationship than the relatively easy passion of an affair. And, long-term relationships require much more work than a one-night stand. So, I am not exactly sure the metaphor works, but yeah, actually, as I think more about it, pleasing a partner sexually can often be about patience and pain, so maybe the sex metaphor fits better than I might at first think.

This post is part of an ongoing interview with author Mark John Isola about his forthcoming book Inky Flesh, so check back for more questions. Once posted, a link following the current Q&A will allow you to click through to read the next question–or begin reading from the first question: Why the title Inky Flesh? Quotes that are reasonably sized and maintain the context of the discussion are permitted for review, interview, academic, and blogging purposes—a link to the web page quoted will help maintain context.

Here is the current question:

Cal: Moving out from the title, let me ask about the general topic the stories explore—namely sex. Is your own sexual experience reflected in your stories?

MJ: I knew this question was coming at some point. I do not say this because I want to dodge the question but because I do not think there is an answer that respects the writing. If I say yes, the stories lose what I hope is their literary appeal. They become something like a journal or a sex blog where I am merely detailing hook ups. And, if I say no, their sense of realism is diminished.

My answer should probably be some sort of evasive Dorothy Parkerism, which I have not yet devised, because any answer seems to devalue the writing.

I am also hesitant to answer this question because writing sex is a particular challenge in our culture. This challenge stems, in part, from readers, who read an author’s personhood in terms of the words on a page, as if there is a one-to-one correspondence between the two.

Sex writing is not the only genre haunted by this specter. This is also a challenge for poetry. It can be difficult for readers—I have seen this routinely with my college students over the years—to discern the poet from the poem’s speaker, who may or may not be the same or even some composite of the two. This is why reading biographically can be a limited way of reading fiction.

The other complication that arises, especially when it comes to sexual narratives, is the tendency we have to think a person’s sex story is always a fiction that minimizes or exaggerates their truth. You know, the girl ashamed to admit she has, the guy afraid to admit he hasn’t, and the gays not wanting to be shunned. This is a significant problem, for if an author, who writes about sex, is not careful, the truth value of their narratives becomes subsumed to what people think they are hiding or exaggerating and not what the narrative is expressing.

But, to answer your question, yes, in the most general sense, I write from my lived experience. My sexual experiences are somewhere in the stories. They are, perhaps, everywhere within them. How could they not be? To do otherwise counters the most common creative writing advice—to write from a sense of the world you know.

So, how could I not write from my sexual experience? How could I not write from my life experience? And, why would I want to? Do we ever write beyond our experiences? I am not sure such a thing is even possible really. I am also not sure such a thing is advisable. Such efforts may actually embrace a blind spot that could be quite limiting, or even problematic, for one’s writing.

Cal: How could this blind spot you mention be problematic for writing fiction?

MJ: Well, I am a gay male in a culture with a patriarchal preference. My experience may well leave me rather clueless about what it is like to live and love in our culture as a gay female. In this case, I would very much like to avoid writing from my blind spot, my ignorance, when writing a gay female character.

Instead, I would rather realize and work through my experience, so I may write well, or at least try, despite the limits of my experience. Otherwise, I would be at-risk of something like writing flat, static, stereotyped, or otherwise unauthentic characters through the veil of my relative privilege. And, who wants to read that? I, for one, have no interest in writing that way.

This post is part of an ongoing interview with author Mark John Isola about his forthcoming book Inky Flesh, so check back for more questions. Once posted, a link following the current Q&A will allow you to click through to read the next question–or begin reading from the first question: Why the title Inky Flesh? Quotes that are reasonably sized and maintain the context of the discussion are permitted for review, interview, academic, and blogging purposes—a link to the web page quoted will help maintain context.

Here is the next question:

Cal: How does the theme of rejection work in your stories?

MJ: Rejection can prompt different things in a person’s life. While it can take lives, it may also be understood through the Christian sense of “dying to the self.” Simply put, the old self dies before a new one begins. Some might call this rebirth. Here, a person takes up their personal cross as they embark on a new and higher level journey. So, rejection can prompt resurrection, or as I prefer to think about it, reincarnation.

This helps explain why the superhero story often feels just one step away from being a gay narrative. It’s this tension not the tights.

What I am talking about is close to Joyce’s sense of an epiphany, which also moves out from a spiritual model. Epiphany often features in short fiction. This transformative potential explains my preference for writing short stories to get at these themes.

Rejection is, we need to keep in mind, a serious consideration, especially for gay adolescents, who are much more likely to attempt suicide than their hetero-peers. Suicide remains a leading cause of death for gay and lesbian youth. This speaks to the durability of the gay diaspora even in the era of gay marriage.

Being yourself in a culture that disapproves of one’s sexual truth has never been easy nor safe, and this remains true.

As it goes, death and rebirth are generally significant themes that have been very productive for telling stories. Joseph Campbell has brilliantly discussed both as central components of the hero’s journey. These merely take on particular resonance within the GLBT experience. This is the gay bildungsroman. This is why rejection and reincarnation often appear in my short stories.